Meglin Rego knows what it’s like to be bullied.

“Two years ago, there was this boy that I liked,” said Meglin, 11, a fifth-grader at Kennedy School. “And one time at recess, he kicked me in the back. He was a big guy, too  he was 10.”

Being bullied  getting pushed, teased, threatened or purposely left out of activities  is no fun, she said.

“It’s kind of sad, especially when it’s (done by) someone you like, a boy you have a crush on or someone you thought was your friend,” Meglin said.

Other students in Lawrence public schools have had experiences with bullying, too.

Guidance counselors, working with officials from Douglas County Rape Victim-Survivor Service (RVSS), recently distributed a survey in several elementary schools to learn what students in fourth, fifth and sixth grades think about bullying.

RVSS has been invited into the Lawrence public schools to run prevention and education programs about forms of harassment that students face, including bullying.

Students at these schools took the survey on bullying: Broken Arrow, Cordley, Deerfield, East Heights, Langston Hughes, Riverside, Kennedy, New York, Wakarusa Valley, Woodlawn, Sunflower and Quail Run.

Raising awareness

Ann Rasmussen, a counselor at Kennedy School, gave the survey a few weeks ago to fourth-graders at the school, 1605 Davis Road.

Seventy-six percent of students said they never, or rarely, witness bullying at Kennedy School. Seventy-seven percent said they thought adults at school are able to stop incidents of bullying and help solve the problem.

The survey asked students about the ways they’ve been bullied in the past. Sixty-three percent of them said that, at one time or another, they have been teased or called names.

Thirty-three percent of students said they’ve been kicked or pushed on occasion.

Why were they bullied?

Students responded that they thought it was because they were smaller or weaker than the bully, or that they were smarter and did well in school.

With the results of surveys like the one done at Kennedy School, educators will work with people from RVSS to teach students about how to recognize and deal with forms of harassment, like bullying.

“It’s important, because kids have told us that it happens,” said Sarah Jane Russell, executive director of RVSS. “The work that we’re doing in the schools we’ve been invited into is about raising awareness and increasing kids’ sense of emotional safety in talking about it.”

Laurie Hart, prevention education coordinator for RVSS, goes into Lawrence schools to talk with students about harassment and bullying.

“Kids find lots of ways to bully each other,” Hart said. “They use physical bullying, they trip and push each other. And there’s a lot of verbal bullying  name-calling, spreading rumors, threatening or making fun of others, leaving people out.”

Students tell her they think there are a variety of reasons why some people are bullies.

“They say maybe it’s a way to get power when you feel powerless, it’s a way to get attention or they may bully people because they don’t feel so good about themselves,” Hart said.

Positive changes

Meglin has some ideas about why some students are bullies.

“Most of the people who bully want to be popular, or there’s something going on at home and then they take it out on people at school,” she said. “They give you their anger.”

But people can sometimes change for the better.

“You can start out as a bully, and then things at home stop being all crazy, and all of the sudden they’re nice again,” Meglin adds.

In school, students are learning strategies to deal with bullies, such as using humor, walking away from a fight or finding an adult to help with the situation.

Jakob Weber, 11, a fourth-grader at Kennedy School, has his own method of handling bullies.

“If you’re smarter than them, chew them out,” he said. “Use all these big, fancy words that they can’t comprehend. They’re confused, and then you run away.”